Epiphany
January 6, 1969
As the gelid morning light worked its way through the curtains, Balthazar could make out Baby Jesus against the gold speckled hay in his manger, his arms raised to the Angels and Heavens above. Mary in blue and Joseph in brown bent over him, while shepherds stood in clumps in the foreground. A distant window off in the village up above them displayed an amputated head while a woman standing in front of it nonchalantly fed her chickens. The thin light reached the banner of the angel perched on the top of the stable and “Gloria” gleamed faintly. Balthazar looked down at the casket of gold he was holding to take to the Christ Child and he heard someone shuffling in the next room.
Melchior and Gaspar were behind him, followed by the camel and elephant and stallion; three pages wearing silk turbans held the reins to the animals. The nine components of their caravan had been camped out since last night on the coffee table, standing on various large modern art books scattered over its expansive, expensive crystal surface. Today the Three Magi would finally ascend to the Renaissance credenza and become part of the crèche’s final scene. Tomorrow, everyone – villagers, animals, Holy Family, angels, shepherds, and wise men would return to tissue paper and straw in crates. They would be carefully stored away in the darkness of the attic through the cold of winter and the stirring of insects in spring. The blistering summertime heat high in the roof of the house would bake everything as slowly and evenly as a good oven did, and then autumn would come with its cooling crackles. Finally, four Sundays before Christmas, all the players in the nativity circus would be taken down, removed from their boxes and ancient tissue paper and straw, and placed in the warmth of the heated Baldini home, to repeat their story of the Christ Child and the treks various to find him.
The little village on the hill with its papier-mâché housewife and her chickens and bodiless head staring out of her home, had been placed along one wall in the living room in December with the stable and some straw. Her husband’s body had long gone missing, and each time the set of wood and terracotta figurines had been sold, the new owner purchasing the set, asked where the rest of his body was. The seller would always say: “Oh this. I don't know where the body is, but if you put his head on the window ledge of one of the houses, it looks like he’s just seen the star over Bethlehem; just point his eyes that way.” So each year, the proof of decapitation remained in the set and was usually wrapped up and tossed into the stable. So first the head came out of the stable. The beasts were put in the stable and the tiny village on the hill was arranged on and around the television set, to the right of the stable and slightly in the background. In the second week of Advent, Mary and Joseph trotted across the room, he leading her and the donkey and they finally arrived at the stable on the third Sunday in advent. The shepherds were scattered on various end tables in the living room until Christmas Eve when the Angel appeared over the stable and beckoned them to come to the crèche where a host of Angels in billowing pastel starched linen gowns holding uplifted trumpets and swinging censors over the stable had been hung from the ceiling. On Christmas morning, Baby Jesus magically appeared in the manger. Then the shepherds came to the manger, bowing and scraping and offering him a little lamb.
This year, the three wise men had seen none of this, for they had started their quest out in the grandeur of the foyer with its rich baroque tapestries, blasts of cold air, and smell of sables and fresh cologne as guests and family members entered and left the house. Through the month of December the Magi had been patiently moved, usually once a week but sometimes every day, and were transported closer and closer to the manger. On Christmas Day, they had been placed on the sideboard in the dining room and were inundated by the warming aromas of capon broth and nutmeg scented pasta served all day long on Christmas. On New Year’s Eve, they were placed on the monumental Lombard chest of drawers outside the entrance to the living room and on New Year’s Day, they had made it to the top of the tall 17th century bookcase at the far end of this richly appointed salon. From this vantage point, Balthazar could see everything that took place in front of the Bethlehem stable sitting on the gorgeous Renaissance credenza standing beside the long modern travertine console hung on the wall next to the television set. Everyone was at the manger except for them.
Balthazar knew this static choreography of the Christmas story was the family’s tradition and it had relatively little to do with religion. It was a game to keep the children amused; the servants and children talked about what had to be done with the fabulous nativity figures which their mother had bought at an antique shop in Cortina a few years ago. Balthazar overheard the conversations of everyone in the household, for the Magi followed the route where all the guests and family members and servants walked through the house every day. Balthazar knew he would make it to the manger this morning. He also knew that after the sun went down this evening and the family had finished a sumptuous supper of sturgeon and salmon with all their cousins, the maid would come in and gently wrap everyone up in tissue paper and straw and put them away for another year.
Nilde entered the room and opened the heavy silk brocade curtains, one window after another, until the room was enveloped in the pasty grey light of Epiphany. The modern suede sofas seemed to be made of a soft beige fog and the stupendous millefleurs tapestries barely revealed their own figures of Flemish dancers and hunters in colours that had all but faded to a monochromatic sepia. The high 17th century bookshelves were filled with rare editions of art books and etchings, codices and catalogues, and two lost Barbies concealed behind the great tomes. The Brunette Barbie behind the Kelmscott Chaucer had been placed there three years ago by Eugenio who had forgotten where he had hidden his sister’s doll. Instead, the Blonde Barbie was behind a stack of the last six months of Vogue magazines from Paris , London , New York and Italy
Balthazar had surmised that the Baldini family was far more than wealthy and Balthazar knew more than most people about riches. Balthazar also concluded that the only members of the Baldini family that had actually been born into riches were the pudgy little boy Eugenio and lithe, sylphlike sister Camilla. Their father Valter with his manly zygomatic scar, rough skin and shock of coal black hair had been born into nothing, like his wife Gilda. Her skin was tanned all year long from the light reflected off sea or snow and her frame was eternally draped in Fendi “F’s.” Gilda’s main talent was spending money and shopping. Valter’s talent instead, ran to making shrewd investments with such high yields that Gilda never once had to think about not buying something: a yacht, a basket of truffles, Christian Dior hose, a fazenda in Argentina, or even the gorgeous 18th century Neapolitan crèche set to which Balthazar belonged. Gilda never wasted anything, nothing was ever thrown out (it was given away or salvaged by the maids), but nothing really had any special value for her, unless it were something that she had not purchased yet.
Eugenio and Camilla were quite another thing. At ten and seven years of age, they never thought about not having something because they always had everything they wanted. They were perfectly groomed and admirably behaved. Camilla would grow into great ethereal beauty, and after Eugenio grew out of his childhood chubbiness, he would marry extremely well, courtesy the great wealth that cushioned him. Money meant nothing to either of them, nothing at all. They never had been without it; they never would be without it. Asking them about money would be like asking any other human being how much importance they gave to cheese. It might go missing one day, and you really didn’t have to have it, but the thought of a world without cheese (though possible) was so preposterous that it did not even merit consideration.
Balthazar heard the discreet clatter of the cook laying the breakfast dishes and silverware in the kitchen. He smelled the bergamot in the Earl Grey tea that Gilda had to have even before she came down for breakfast, the chocolaty nutella Eugenio was dosed for his bread (Eugenio had a hard time keeping weight off), the bitter thick black espresso that Valter drank all day long, and finally the fragrant vanilla in the ladyfingers that Camilla ate for breakfast every day. Then Balthazar smelled something else. What was it?
Toasted barley. Egidio must be coming over this morning.
Egidio was Gilda’s father, and the fount of all this wealth. Indeed, Egidio’s personal wealth exceeded the assets of all his offspring and employees put together. If Egidio had been one of the Kings, one of the Magi, he would have been Balthazar, the Wise Man who brought baby Jesus the gift of gold from his great mines of precious ore. Balthazar and Egidio both knew frankincense and myrrh were dissipating luxuries and certainly could not readily be traded for what they cost. Gold however, and real estate, were tangibles that never lost their value and Egidio knew that.
Egidio had made his fortune after the Second World War, by supplying olive oil to the villages surrounding the tiny village of Glorie di Bagnacavallo. Egidio’s father had taught him how to make the baskets that held the demijohns of golden liquid. Egidio figured out how to pack the baskets on trucks, found trustworthy people to drive the trucks, and quickly grasped how important it was to give a discount when necessary. It was not long before he was snapping up property when he heard someone was in a hurry to sell. Egidio realized the crux of weaving a basket was the first spoke you placed in the base. As long as that central spoke of dried cane held the bottom of the basket, the cask would hold; as long as the cask held, the oil would make it to the truck, and as long the truck held the demijohns, the oil would make it to the customer; as long as the product made it to the customer, payment would be forthcoming. Commerce was nothing more than one step after another, each spoke of a basket that had to be tightly interwoven with perpendicular reeds until they formed an entire whole that permitted transportation and exchange.
Egidio understood early on that he was the first vertical reed. When he met the man who would one day become his son-in-law, Egidio immediately realized that Valter would also become was the reed perpendicular to him.
Egidio never applied the idea of credit, often to Valter’s chagrin. Egidio always paid on the nail, at the moment, and expected the same. He went to the Chicago Grain Market in the Savile Row tailored suits his wife ordered without consulting him and hung in his closet. When he found a likely customer, Egidio would shove his callused fist into his pink-silk-lined pocket, pull out a handful of wheat or barley or oats, and tell the person in front of him with his thick accent: “This is what I sell. I have fifteen silos of it outside Buenos Aires
Egidio always sold it. He always got a good price. He did not always get the best price, but he never lost a lira. Egidio knew that the trick of doing business was not getting the best deal possible; it was always getting a good deal. If you did that, you could not fail. It was not greed that ruined people: it was ambition. Always trying to get the best deal was pretty stupid. It turned the people who had to attain their own personal, maximum advantage into mean, wheeler-dealers who cheated their employees and ruined their friends. These people thought that money made them great ladies and gentlemen, when all they were, were lice in stained, satin underwear.
Better to know you are a farmer with a pocketful of oats than a niggard trying to pass yourself off as a gran signore.
Egidio’s doctor had told him he could not drink coffee any more, so whenever he came to the Baldini household, Nilde in the kitchen would toast some of his barley, grind it into a powder and perk up un espresso pot of it for him. She served it put it in a sparkling white bowl just the way he liked it: with a dash of nutmeg and hot frothy white milk.
“Here’s the Sgnor’s breakfast!”
“Thank you, Nilde. Is anybody up yet?”
“Who do you think might be up?”
“Valter probably, and he’s most likely out hunting.”
“Sgnor Egidio, you know your chickens. I suspect Sgnor Valter’ll be back about eight. What time is it now?”
“Ten to eight.”
“I should put his coffee on, too.”
“Good, because I need him, Nilde. Let him know when he comes in. Now, where would an old hag like the Befana hang these stockings I brought, when she comes knocking on the door in her rags?”
Egidio was toting a large farmer’s weathered kindling basket and pulled out two pairs of ladies’ pantyhose with carrots poking out of the runs in them. They were filled with real straw and real coal and real ashes and were comically preposterous. Nilde burst out laughing.
“Where did you get those pantyhose?”
“From my wife. She was going to throw them away and my grandchildren needed something where the Befana can leave them their ashes and coal in for Epiphany. What do you say we hang them from the fireplace in the living room?”
“Well, I suppose that’ll be alright; the ashes would fall on the hearth and we aren’t expecting any guests this morning. But straw? Why did the Sgnor put straw in them? Weren’t the coal and ashes enough?”
“What will my grandchildren feed their new ponies if I don’t give them some straw? Nutella and ladyfingers?”
“Ponies! Oh, you’ll have a couple of happy little grandchildren this morning. Here, let’s go hang them up. I’ll give you a hand.”
While Nilde and Egidio were in the living room hanging up the stockings, Valter stomped into the kitchen holding a couple of coots, swinging upside down from their dead legs. He saw the bowl of brownish milk, which must have toasted barley in it and that meant that his father-in-law was in the house. Had something happened on the Chicago
“Look at those tracks! You take your boots off right now! You’ve got mud all over the kitchen floor!”
Valter looked down at his feet. “Yeah, but I also got two nice plump coots. Since the ladies of the house don’t eat game, and I know your husband Raoul likes it, if you’ll just stop pissing and moaning about the dirt, you can take these birds home. If you bring me back a breast to eat at the end of the week.”
“Sgnor Valter, you’re incorrigible, but you’re a good hunter and Raoul and I do like nothing better than coots and polenta. But, you take off those boots, right now. I won’t have you tracking up the whole house.”
While Valter sat and pulled off his muddy galoshes, Nilde went into the dirt room and came back with a pair of leather slippers.
“And your socks. Take those nasty socks off, too.”
Nilde bent down as Valter took his socks off, balled them up, and slipped his slippers on. She smiled up at him and said: “Black coffee?”
“Nilde, you know the way to a man’s heart: give him exactly what he wants when he needs it.”
“You’ll need it, too. Sgnor Egidio is in the living room hanging up the Befana’s stockings. He needs you.”
“Must be money. Can’t be land. Can’t be disease. Well, we’ll see what the story is. Let me go see.”
“Oh, no you don’t, you don’t go into the living room in your muddy hunting clothes. I’ll get your father-in-law for you. Turn the burner off if the coffee perks while I’m not here.”
Nilde brought Egidio back to the kitchen.
“What is it, old man?”
“Thieves, Valter. Hired thieves. Thieves we hired and will not be long on our payroll after today. I need you to skip lunch today and sit with me during a stakeout I have devised.”
“The Granarolo sorghum silo?”
“Is it that obvious?”
“Only if you’re paying attention. Who do you think it is?”
“I’m not dumb enough to say that out loud to anyone, even you. But we’ll see who it is today; I know the groundskeeper is letting him (or them) in.”
“Emanuele?”
“Unfortunately, yes. It’s a real shame. His wife’s in the hospital with cancer. This is going to cost Emanuele his job.”
“How much has it cost us?”
“Twenty-three million lire in lost grain.”
“That’s enough money to go after.”
“Goddamit, twenty-three lire is enough to go after, if it’s being stolen from you. I’ll come pick you up at a quarter past eleven. We’ll be using Raoul’s Fiat; I lent him my red Alfa. Now let me run out before the kids get up and figure out that I’m the Befana. See you at a quarter past eleven.”
Egidio walked out the door and Valter turned to drink his coffee. The door to the dining room squeaked open and he heard the muffled sound of terrycloth slippered feet shuffling over the parquet. His children must be awake.
Camilla lazily pushed her way through the door into the kitchen. Graceful and almost translucent, she was enchantingly lovely even at seven. Her long flaxen hair fell in disarray around her face, and she clutched her fuzzy white bathrobe around her shoulders.
“Papi! Good morning! Did you get something in the marshes this morning?”
“A couple of coots. Do you want Nilde to cook them up for you?”
“You know I can’t abide animals with feathers on them. All I want now is a big cup of hot milk and some cookies.”
Nilde placed a steaming bowl on the table in front of Camilla who gazed guilelessly into the steaming froth.
“Well, my little white hen, have you checked to see if the Befana has come and brought you your Epiphany gift?”
“Oh Papi, of course she has, But first I really do need to take some nourishment. Can’t we wait five minutes? We should give Eugenio a chance to come downstairs as well so we can open our presents together.”
Valter stared at his daughter: she was so stunning, she almost gleamed. He wondered where she had gotten her looks. Valter was unusually swarthy, and there was nothing dark about Camilla. She looked as if she had been born in Sicily seven hundred years earlier, one of the famed diaphanous Normans, so creamy was her complexion and lustrous her blonde hair. Camilla’s skin was so soft it looked like you could eat it with a spoon and her almond-shaped dark green eyes made her perfectly formed white teeth sparkle even more. She would not have a hard time finding a husband one day.
Valter knocked his coffee back and left the kitchen. He went upstairs to take a shower and found Gilda submerged in the rich ivory satin counterpane, her sleeping mask on, her red hair splayed all over the eight goose down pillows she insisted on keeping on their battlefield-sized bed. The bed was so large their sheets had to be specially made, and the mattress itself had been artfully crafted from two regular sized mattresses. It was like sleeping in a giant’s blazer pocket, there was so much silk and linen; Valter could stretch out like a swastika and still not even touch Gilda. He wondered again if Camilla had really been his child.
“Valter?”
“Yes, Gilda.”
“Don’t wake me up!”
With that, she turned over and plunged her body into the depths of the bedclothes.
Valter went into the bathroom and showered. When he emerged, the maid had brought in a silver tray with Gilda’s tea on it, another cup of espresso for Valter, and a note from Egidio telling Gilda that he probably would not be at lunch, and neither would Valter. Gilda was fuming.
“My father! Can’t he ever stop working? I’ve hired a ballet dancer to dress up like an old country woman and come by as the Befana for the kids”
“Well, you’ll need to do something about that. The Befana has already been by.”
At this, they heard the shouts and screams of their children downstairs.
“Oh my God! Valter! They’ve come to kidnap the children. Get your gun!”
Valter sat on the bed, gave Gilda her tea, took his coffee, and drank it at a draught.
“Get up! Put on your bathrobe and come downstairs to see what the Befana has brought the kids.”
When Valter and Gilda arrived in the living room, the children were dancing around the room, singing and shouting: “What can we call them?”
“Call who?” asked Gilda.
“Our new ponies! The Befana left us straw and the keys to the stable and that can only mean one thing!”
“I’ll get that honey colored roan I wanted!”
“And I’ll get the morello of my dreams. Oh Mami! Let’s go now.”
“We’re not even going to talk about it. I’m still in my dressing gown and haven’t had breakfast.”
“Oh Papi! Papi Papi Papi! Take us now!”
Nilde was watching from the kitchen, and when she saw Valter and Gilda with Camilla and Eugenio, she stepped back and motioned to someone behind her. A woman dressed in chiffon rags holding a tattered sack, hobbled through the kitchen door into the living room. It was the Befana, the old hag who brought good children gifts on Epiphany, just like the gifts the Magi had brought the baby Jesus on Epiphany. Balthazar had met the Befana centuries ago when Melchior, Gaspar, and he had stopped at her house on the road to Bethlehem, knocked on the door, and asked for directions. She had not had the time to speak to them, and slammed her door in their faces. Only five minutes later, she was filled with remorse. She wrapped a shawl about her shoulders and grabbed a basket of dried figs to the take to the manger, but she never found it or the three kings she had rebuffed. She had spent Januaries of the centuries ever since wandering in search of the Christ Child; all she ever found were miniature plaster babies lying on clean straw in someone’s living room. She ended up leaving her gifts for the good children of the homes she came across. That was her story.
This chiffon draped Befana’s story was purely commercial with a whiff of self promotion; she was actually a dancer from the ballet school, a beguiling witch who comically hobbled en pointe about the room in her black silk stockings. The children laughed with glee and Valter looked at her legs. Gilda was pleased: she was unquestionably the chicest Befana that had ever crossed anyone’s threshold. As the Befana was about to speak, Gilda turned in a loud stage voice to the children and said: “Well aren’t you going to thank the Befana for the wonderful presents she left you this morning? It was awfully nice of her to come back and see how happy you would be with your new ponies.”
Eugenio and Camilla clutched at the Befana’s tulle rags and kissed her artistically blackened hands. Valter left the room to get the keys to the car, and Gilda sent Befana into the kitchen for something to drink and more bergamot tea for herself.
Balthazar, whom no one was looking at, twinkled. She was the best-looking Befana he had ever seen.
No sooner had the Befana left the room than the children started dancing around Gilda again, imploring her to let them go to the stable. Valter came back and jiggled the car keys in his pocket. He looked at Gilda, who was perturbed but helpless in the face of her children’s’ enthusiasm. To contradict them now would mean an almost forgivable temper tantrum from both of them.
“If your Mother says you can go to the stable ….”
“Oh Mami Mami Mami Mami Mami Mami! Let Papi take us to the stable! Please!”
Gilda turned to Valter. “Well, if you’ll be here for lunch …”
“I can’t do that. But I’ll get the kids back by half past ten and you’ll have some peace and quiet in the meantime.”
“Ohh all, right. Here,” Gilda said grabbing Balthazar around the waist. “But at least let me put this goddamn wise guy at the manger. And kids, you get the other two.”
With their mother’s accession to their wishes, both Camilla and Eugenio calmed down and became as good as gold. Eugenio gingerly picked up Melchior while Camilla gracefully pulled Gaspar to her chest as they walked from the coffee table past the monumental travertine console. Valter took Balthazar from Gilda and placed him in the back; then Eugenio placed Melchior in front of him, and Camilla placed kneeling Gaspar so he hovered over the Baby Jesus.
Gilda’s shallow pique was immediately placated by the sheer beauty of her family in this simple gesture: her rough and ready, muscular and almost Moorish husband; her childishly plump son with his braces glinting from his eternal grin and Camilla as poised as a virgin swan with perfect proportions, skin like peau soie, and deep emerald green eyes.
“And if you’re going to get ponies, you might as well learn how to lead beasts to the manger,” she said pointing to the elephant, the camel and the Arabian stallion still standing on the coffee table with their leads. She bent over an enormous end table, slid the magazines off a capacious silver tray, and held it out so her family could transfer the darling pageboys in turbans and zouave pants, and the three luxuriously bedizened beasts of burden. As the girls and Valter loaded the retinue on the tray Gilda was holding, Valter leaned over and kissed Gilda in front of her ear, whispering: “Thank you!”
As soon as the animals and the kings’ attendants arrived at the manger, Balthazar saw the children bolt from the room to put on their riding clothes. Valter and Gilda went into the kitchen to thank the Befana, have a cup of coffee, and arrange a gala evening meal for their brothers and sisters and nephews and nieces with Nilde.
Balthazar had been placed the farthest away from Baby Jesus. He knew the elephant had been placed behind him; they usually contrasted Balthazar’s black skin against the pearly grey of Melchior’s elephant with its golden-fringed howdah and pigeon’s blood ruby brocade parasol. Balthazar looked at the Holy Family once again, and anguish struck him. Balthazar knew the story of the Holy Family and the stories of all families that came after them. He could see the pain and despair in the decades to come: for Mary and Joseph, Gilda and Valter, and Camilla, Eugenio and Jesus. All too often, the occasion of birth marked the high point
The elephant began:
“A great square with a fountain at its centre,
Will overflow with ...”
The camel continued:
“.. the blood of the innocent
Within the ...”
The stallion finished
“.......... Year!
The evil is clear!
Sated, fated, even hated
The future cannot be overstated:
Damned be the Sire
Who doth to murder aspire!”
Balthazar had been waiting to hear the evil omen for the year to come, a fresh omen that was revealed to him every year by his beasts of burden. The Square with the Fountain would be an enigma to discuss with Melchior and Gaspar, though as a Magus, Balthazar could easily interpret the reference to the “Sire” by himself. The three kings would not stop and visit Herod on their return.
* * * * * *
Later that evening, the sturgeon and salmon were taken from the dining room table and the dishes were cleared and cleaned: the sumptuous meals of the Christmas season were now finished. Since tomorrow was the first day of school (and officially, work) after the Christmas holidays, Gilda and Valter and Camilla and Eugenio went to bed early. Nilde came into the living room with crates she had neatly stored in the mudroom and boxed up the crèche. Nilde would get Raoul to take the crates to the attic in the morning when he dropped her off for work.
As Nilde was wrapping up Balthazar, Balthazar’s gaze was fixed on Joseph who had fallen asleep. Poor Joseph: he was the least popular character in any crèche because he seemed to play only an auxiliary role. Balthazar knew far better than this. Joseph would be the first person to save his stepson. The Angel was still hanging from the peak of the stable; as Nilde gently wrapped Balthazar’s head in soft wrinkled pink tissue paper from the 1920’s, Balthazar heard the Angel tell Joseph in his sleep: “Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word: for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him.”
The Slaughter of the Innocents was about to begin.
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